Joel Hackney , president, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel, said, "The new family of Nortel Ethernet switches we are introducing are designed to not only deliver that performance needed today, but to accommodate the evolving needs and capacity unified communications will require in the future".

Nortel claims that the Ethernet Routing Switch 5600 has been designed as a cost effective and reliable switch not only suitable for deployment in the datacenter, but can also be used in the edge, distribution and core layers of the network. The 5600 switches are said to be stack-compatible with the existing ERS 5500 switches, allowing a mix of port speeds and densities to meet any application while preserving existing investments.

According to Nortel, these switches were designed and engineered from the ground up to be a break from the evolutionary approach to building data products to deliver real-time unified communications with market-leading performance and features.